Thursday, 16 September 2010

Quote of the day...

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the Twentieth Century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a reductive vision of the person and his destiny.

Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate.

The "atheist extremism," of course, is the Nazis. And as a Vatican spokesperson confirmed, as a former member of the Hitler Youth, the Pope knew "rather well what the Nazi ideology is about." Which is why we can only conclude that "Benedict XVI" is being purposefully dishonest.

After all, he must surely have been privy to Hitler's speech at the Reichstag on 30th January 1939;

Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration:

1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted....

The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State... Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation.

It is therefore, to put mildly-- effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich....

I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds?

3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion....

There are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State....

This State has only once intervened in the internal regulation of the Churches, that is when I myself in 1933 endeavoured to unite the weak and divided Protestant Churches of the different States into one great and powerful Evangelical Church of the Reich. That attempt failed through the opposition of the bishops of some States; it was therefore abandoned. For it is in the last resort not our task to defend or even to strengthen the Evangelical Church through violence against its own representatives....

But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy.

This quote comes from the site nobeliefs.com, which offers an extensive argument in favour of Hitler being a Christian. Albeit, of course, an extremely mental and evil one hardly representative of the faith. And the ability to make that distinction, incidentally, puts both myself and that site on the moral high ground over Ratzinger.

As a spokesperson for the British Humanist Association pointed out;

The notion that it was the atheism of Nazis that led to their extremist and hateful views or that somehow fuels intolerance in Britain today is a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God.

The notion that it is non-religious people in the UK today who want to force their views on others, coming from a man whose organisation exerts itself internationally to impose its narrow and exclusive form of morality and undermine the human rights of women, children, gay people and many others is surreal.